[ENGLISH REVIEW] - "Serpent and Dove" by Shelby Mahurin

 

Good morning guys!! I'm here to publish my English review of "Serpent and Dove".

I wanna say thank you to the House Publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I remind you that if you want to buy some books that I suggest, I kindly ask you if you can do it through the links that I leave you as I am affiliated with Amazon. Nothing changes for you, you pay nothing more, but if you make your purchases through my links, Amazon gives me a small percentage of the book's cover price. The money earned, I need to maintain the blog. Thanks for the support.

Title: Serpent & Dove

Author: Shelby Maurin

Publisher: HarperCollins 

Published on: 4 August 2020

Pages: 519

Price: 10,69€ €

Amazon link 

Two years ago, Louise le Blanc fled her coven and took shelter in the city of Cesarine, forsaking all magic and living off whatever she could steal. There, witches like Lou are hunted. They are feared. And they are burned.

As a huntsman of the Church, Reid Diggory has lived his life by one principle: Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. But when Lou pulls a wicked stunt, the two are forced into an impossible situation: marriage.

Lou, unable to ignore her growing feelings, yet powerless to change what she is, must make a choice. And love makes fools of us all.

Set in a world of powerful women, dark magic, and off-the-charts romance, book one of this stunning fantasy trilogy will leave readers burning for more.

I finally managed to read this book too! You can't understand how long I waited to read this book and as soon as I managed to retrieve it, I dove into it and ... I finished it in two days ...

"Serpent & Dove," tells us the story of a witch and a hunter. Lou Le Blanc is a girl, or rather, a young witch who has been on the run from her coven for two years. For this reason, she tries to hide and turns into a thief to survive. In addition to these difficulties, she finds herself having to hide her magic because whoever uses it is recognized by the witch hunters through the particular smell that the magic springs.

Reid, on the other hand, is a chasseur very converted to his mission: witches are evil and must be eliminated. Obviously, we know perfectly well that destiny, at times, has terribly fun and certainly hasn't been outdone with these two naive poor people.

After a very serious misunderstanding, where Reid was trying to catch Lou as a "thief", they ended up catapulted onto the stage of the theater where the escape was taking place, in a very compromising position. To prevent the goal and sanctity of the order of witch hunters from being ruined, the Archbishop hastily announced the marriage between Lou and Reid: a witch and a hunter. Funny, isn't it?

"Serpent & Dove" was one of the most pleasant reads of the last period. When I started reading it, in less than an hour, I had already read 100 pages and couldn't stop. I had never read anything about the fight between the "witches" and the Church and I must say, I was fascinated by it and would like to find out more about this topic even if it is approached as a fantasy theme.

The characters are another thing that I particularly enjoyed. They are antipodes but together they are an explosive bomb that sets off sparks and fireworks. Lou is a force of nature. She doesn't give up, she is brave, foul-mouthed, irreverent and she doesn't let anyone put her feet on her head. Reid, on the other hand, is more controlled, shy, thoughtful, and introverted. Together, I repeat, BOMB !! The ship started from the very first pages and their love was crazy: enemies to lovers !!

I was particularly intrigued by the character of Coco, I was very disappointed about the fact we do not know a lot about her, I sincerely hope that in the next volumes we will be able to find out more about her story.

I would like to point out only one negative side. This book is very focused on the story of Lou and Reid, which I appreciated because if you've been following me for a while, you know perfectly well how much I care about well-made characters and their introspective analyzes, but in this volume, the world-building is missing. We have mentioned something, but in my opinion, it is too little. We are told the story of Angelica and Costantino, the two people who started the fight between witches and "humans". She was "thrown" (forgive me for the term, but to make you understand) there because she had to make sense of what was happening but it was not the priority. Besides, the two covenants are mentioned: the dames Blanche and the blood witches, but we do not know how their magic works, what is the difference. In short, I would have liked an in-depth study on the fantasy element, on how magic works.

Besides, the evolution, the maturation of the characters are not so striking, even if Reid makes his own path of growth, while Lou remains essentially what she is.

I hope that in the second volume we will have the opportunity to find out more about world building, about how magic works, and some more insight into the secondary characters.

In conclusion, I loved this book and the love story it tells us and I highly recommend it as a paranormal romance book for anyone who appreciates fantasy but prefers a good love story. We hope that in the second there is more fantasy !! Can't wait to read it.